Effects of electrolyte on ZnO nanostructures synthesized by galvanostatic electrochemical deposition and their UV sensing properties

In this study, ZnO nanorods (NRs) and nanocombs (NCs) are synthesized by simple galvanostatic electrochemical deposition technique, without prepared any ZnO seed-layer or catalyst. The effect of the different morphologies on the UV sensing characteristics has been studied under ambient conditions. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra and time-dependent photoresponse of the ZnO nanostructures exhibited good optical properties. At room temperature, NCs showed superior response with 9% change of its resistance, few seconds response time and fully recovery. Inversely, in high temperature ZnO NRs indicated better response than NCs with the variation of 25% of its resistance. The dependence photo-response on temperature demonstrated clearly how surface-defects affect on UV response of ZnO nanostructures. Our approach is to provide a simple and cost-effective way to fabricate UV detectors. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.